


i was there when you grew restless

by beyondthehorizon



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Brotherly Love, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Tadashi Hamada Lives, but mostly it's just soft, in which tadashi does not die because we are not about that here, not at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23298199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyondthehorizon/pseuds/beyondthehorizon
Summary: you would kill for me, and knew that i'd do the same.(or: Hiro is Hiro, and Tadashi is Tadashi, but in the end they're brothers all the same.)
Relationships: Hiro Hamada & Tadashi Hamada
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	i was there when you grew restless

**Author's Note:**

> title from radical face's always gold, which is a so very, very hamada brothers song.

So he wakes one morning, and the bed on the other side of the room is empty. It doesn’t look like it was slept in at all last night, and Tadashi can do nothing but sigh: a long, shaky sound, because this has been coming for months now. 

He remembers Hiro’s odd behavior the day prior. He’d been nervous, glancing over his shoulder and shifting his weight from foot to foot. He should have known. He did know.

Tadashi swallows, and rolls himself out of bed. There was a picture of the three of them on the nightstand when he went to bed: a little framed photograph of the surviving Hamadas. It’s gone now, and Tadashi hopes that means he doesn’t want to forget them. He hopes it means, one day, Hiro will come back.

He dresses, and drifts down the stairs. Somehow the house seems so much emptier without his brother in it, even though he spent most of his time in the garage and not in the house proper with Tadashi and Aunt Cass.

Oh, Cass.

He’s going to have to explain this to her. He’s going to have to explain why he didn’t stop it. It’s a cold, slow dread in the pit of his stomach. 

But he doesn’t, because when he gets to the kitchen, Aunt Cass is already there. She’s clutching a note in her hand, wide-eyed, and Tadashi knows everything will be alright.

Hiro will be back. He might not know it yet, he might not want to, but here is what Tadashi knows, first and foremost: he knows his little brother. This is his truth above all else. 

He knows his brother. He has to. (If he doesn’t-)

So he sighs, and when Aunt Cass looks up at him, he tries to give her a smile. It’s fragile and watery and he knows it; just because everything will be alright later doesn’t mean it’s alright now, and Hiro is still gone. 

She hugs him, and doesn’t ask, and he knows he won’t manage words, not today. He doesn’t go to school.

Aunt Cass wants to file a missing person report. Tadashi just shakes his head when she says as much. It doesn’t matter. Hiro is smart enough to look after himself, and smart enough to avoid anyone looking for him. He’ll make his own way. 

They don’t file a missing person report.

And the next day Tadashi shows up at the university. He can see his friends’ worry: Honey Lemon’s brow furrows, and Gogo lifts an eyebrow, but he doesn’t offer an explanation. It won’t matter in the end. They don’t know Hiro.

He goes to class, and their words roll over his head like water. 

Some time later, his friends cajole him into coming to the university’s yearly showcase. As he drifts through all he can think is how much Hiro would have liked to be here, presenting something incredible he created. But he’s not here, because he’s  _ not here. _

There’s no reason for him to stay to the end. He finds Aunt Cass, and they quietly slip out early. 

The rest of the night passes uneventfully. 

So he waits, and he waits, and he breathes: in, and out, and in again, and hold. He clings to his faith, even as his hope wavers. What if he doesn’t know his brother as well as he thought? Has he been a fool?

Is Hiro lying dead in a ditch somewhere because Tadashi trusted too much and left him without support? He banishes the thought as soon as it comes, but the fear lingers. 

How long will he wait? 

It turns out the answer is nine months. Hiro’s hair is longer now, and it sticks to his face as he stands in the pouring rain outside their door.

His eyes are downcast, shoulders slumped, but Tadashi doesn’t miss the inch or so of height he’s put on, the new strength in his frame. He’s grown. 

He looks so much older than fifteen. 

Tadashi also doesn’t miss the way his too-small shirt clings to his prominent ribs, or the way the angles of his face are so much sharper than they were nine months ago, even without the baby fat he’s lost. The bag slung over his shoulder is beaten and frayed, but Tadashi holds no doubt in his mind that it still holds the laptop and tools and parts Hiro disappeared with. 

Maybe a fighter bot. Maybe that’s how he’s been feeding himself.

Wordlessly he steps aside. Hiro slinks in. Tadashi follows his brother’s movements as he makes his way to the kitchen.

He’s lighter on his feet. His presence is quieter. He’s different.

He’s entirely silent as he fills himself a glass of water, and doesn’t touch more than he absolutely has to. It leaves an ache in Tadashi’s heart that he cannot name.

For all of this, he looks better. He’s more comfortable in his skin, even if he’s no longer comfortable in this house he once called home. 

“Did you make it to New York?” Tadashi murmurs. Hiro glances up at him, surprise playing across his face. It’s all Tadashi can do not to smile. Even now, this is his truth, and it really is: he knows his brother. 

(He  _ does.) _

Hiro drops his gaze to his water glass. He shakes his head. “Maybe one day,” he hums, and oh, he still sounds familiar, if nothing else. 

“If you want to stay for the night, know there is always a place for you here.”

Hiro looks up at him, suddenly, sharply. Tadashi thinks anyone else would shirk away under the intense scrutiny, but this is still Hiro. This is still his little brother. He returns the look evenly, and does not falter. 

Hiro’s eyes were always darker than Tadashi’s own, a deep brown almost black in the dim lighting. He knows there would be flecks of gold visible, in the sun, but it’s still raining outside and the lights are out. His face is barely more than a cast of shadows under his brow. 

Whatever it is he’s looking for in Tadashi’s gaze he seems to find, because he huffs quietly and visibly relaxes. He nods in assent. 

Tadashi licks his lips, and takes a chance.

“May I wake Aunt Cass?”

Hiro stiffens, and Tadashi silently curses himself. “Okay,” he says quickly. “I won’t. I won’t.”

Guilt flashes across Hiro’s face. “We’ll give it time, yeah?” he adds. 

Slowly Tadashi approaches him, telegraphing his movements as he raises his arms. He feels a little like he’s approaching a wild animal, and it’s not a feeling he likes, but there’s not much else he can do. Hiro watches him come, and doesn’t glare like he does when he’s insulted.

He melts into the hug, and Tadashi wonders if it’s been those long nine months since someone has touched his brother with kindness. He’s never been the most tactile, but he’s fifteen, and the point stands. 

Nine months ago Hiro only stood at about Tadashi’s shoulders. It’s different, but not... terrible, he doesn’t think, to be able to easily rest his chin on top of his brother’s head. His hair is shockingly clean, even if it’s a tangled rat’s nest. 

He doesn’t know how long they stand there in the kitchen. In the end it’s Hiro who draws away, and for the first time in nine months, Tadashi smiles easily. “I’ve missed you.”

“You’ve missed me?” -and there’s the wry smile, the gap between his front teeth- “Unbelievable.”

Bizarrely, it makes Tadashi want to laugh: to laugh and laugh and never stop, because that’s something Hiro picked up from  _ him _ , and still he keeps it.

He presses down the urge, just smiling at his brother. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs.”

Hiro doesn’t argue. He trails after Tadashi, leading them up to his bedroom that used to be theirs. A flicker of  _ maybe _ has lit in him that it can be theirs again, but Tadashi knows better than to stake his hope on it. 

For now, anyway, he watches Hiro collapse on the bed that’s still his, because his side of the room hasn’t been touched since he left. 

For a heartbeat in Tadashi’s head, the past nine months vanish and everything can go back to how it was. Hiro smiles at him faintly from his bed, but it’s only for a moment because he’s out like a light the next. 

It’s not quite dawn when he tries to silently slip out. It almost works, too- it would have, if Tadashi were not so perfectly tuned to him. 

“I’ll always be here, you know that?” he rumbles, barely awake. Hiro freezes in the doorframe. “Just- drop in, would you? Come find me, when you’re around.”

Hiro doesn’t answer, not out loud, but he glances back at Tadashi and that’s all the answer he needs. He smiles...

...and drifts off back to sleep. When he wakes again, the bed across the room is neatly made. Downstairs in the kitchen last night’s dirty plates are washed and put away. There’s no sign of the passing through of an ephemeral soul.

And that’s what he is, isn't he: Hiro Hamada will never be tied down. He is always in motion, always changing (always leaving). He’ll never have a real home. 

Tadashi drifts toward the front of the café, gaze trailing over its familiar view of San Fransokyo outside. Maybe Hiro is out there still, or maybe he’s already left the city. 

There’s no changing him. There is so little Tadashi can do but be his bastion of strength and a safe place to come back to. 

And that’s what he’ll do, he supposes, until the day he’s nothing but bones in the ground. 


End file.
